


More.

by Toshi_Nama



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen, Red Lyrium
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-29
Updated: 2019-03-29
Packaged: 2019-12-26 08:47:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18279767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Toshi_Nama/pseuds/Toshi_Nama





	More.

The smell. I would never forget the smell.

Charred hair. Molten steel. Burned _rock._ It’s where I learned rock could burn. Worst was the sweet scent of cooked meat, threaded through the rest. It wasn’t venison, or anything else meant to highlight a banquet. It was family. Friends. Faith.

I lost _everything_ there.

_The rift was larger than the other. Huge. ‘Seal it!’_

_Seal it how? ‘You must open it first. Spirits might be pulled through.’ Why was I listening to an apostate when I was a Harrowed mage? Spirits._ Demons.

_I failed._

The second time, I had help. Dozens of my fellows, all pouring power into me, through me.

It sealed, only to reveal the true threat.

I couldn’t remember without seeing everything. How had Corypheus done it, just him?

On these stone ramparts, all my nose could pick up were the smells of high, cold air and the cookfires below…cooked meat. Cooked meat, and stone, and snow on the breeze… _charred hair, burnt stone, and acid-edged lyrium all around. Bone smelled different than stone or metal, harsh and uncaring._

Corypheus. After the Breach was sealed, we saw him. I saw him. Here, in silence and the bile of memory, I could admit the truth. _I couldn’t defeat him._ What was an army against an Archdemon backed by corrupted Templars?

I needed to be more. Why would they follow me? My hand? I knew better. I saw the looks. _Mage._ I remembered the stones, as Cassandra led us out of Haven’s Chantry that first time. Corypheus had powerful followers. I had…what? Refugees. The desperate. The untrained…and all led by the weak. Ostwick was _not_ where talented mages were sent to. It was a backwater. Forgotten, even by the Chantry. Almost forgotten by the Templars who served at the Circle itself.

The Inquisition couldn’t get rid of me. I was the one Corypheus wanted, the accidental sand in his plans. I was the one who could close down the hundreds of minor rifts – though it made me black out. I wasn’t even strong enough to use this ‘gift of Andraste.’

The lies surrounded me. I wasn’t strong. I wasn’t chosen. I was once again in the wrong spot, and managed to live through dumb luck and the sacrifice of someone much more worthy. Power. I could smell it on Corypheus. Lyrium, glowing as heated as the stuff in the Temple.

It was all over now. The Hinterlands, the Storm Coast…everywhere I went, I saw it. Lyrium. Death to mages, unless…

I couldn’t tell anyone.

Could it work?

_It had to._

I headed into the Undercroft. There was only one person who would be willing to attempt this, and she was shifting from one foot to the other. Even for _her,_ this was…

I didn’t care. “Do you have it?”

The bottle glowed.

_He can control the Taint. How can I compete with that?_

Power scorched my throat and sang through my bones when I drank. Lyrium _never_ had that affect. I was one of the few who reacted poorly to the stuff. A ‘magical cripple’ inside a Circle. I couldn’t be. I _couldn’t_ rely on luck and prayer, not with what I’d seen.

 _The smell of stone still sizzling, tormented figures fused to the ground. Spires thrown like a child’s tantrum._ One man had done that. One man…who had made himself something more. Who had challenged the Maker himself.

Dagna watched me too-close. “How are you feeling?”

 _Powerful._ “Fine,” I managed.

“No…anger?”

Anger? Did I feel anger? Anger at the Maker for forcing this on me, anger at the Divine for sacrificing herself to save me, anger at _myself_ for failing to die with everyone else – yes, I felt anger. None of it was new, though. “No.” Mages processed lyrium differently. I processed it…less well than most mages. The red lyrium was different, though. Was _this_ what most mages felt? All I got were hives. The faintest of threads connected my soul to what lay beyond. Was that…the Taint? Darkspawn? Wardens? Or was it what most mages got from lyrium?

I had no one I could ask.

“Make more, please. In opaque vials.” If the Maker hadn’t seen fit to make me capable of facing Corypheus, I would use His punishment against the Seven to correct that. For the first time, I felt…capable.

I wasn’t a leaf on the tides any longer.

I was the Inquisitor.

For the first time since I woke after the Conclave, I couldn’t smell the deaths of everything I’d known.


End file.
